


We Live On

by Katie_Grey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Not Canon Compliant, Post-Hogwarts, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 10:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17282456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katie_Grey/pseuds/Katie_Grey
Summary: This was made for a writing contest over on FF.Net, but I thought I'd post it here just to know if it's good or not. Just a warning, it's pretty dark... and there are some hints of abuse but nothing graphic.





	We Live On

**Author's Note:**

> This was made for a writing contest over on FF.Net, but I thought I'd post it here just to know if it's good or not. Just a warning, it's pretty dark... and there are some hints of abuse but nothing graphic.

Lucius lay on his deathbed, pale as the curtains that lay like ghosts around him, with his eyes closed and his hands over his heart. His hair lay like spiderwebs, falling thinly over the bedsheets. His skin was stretched taut over sharp-angled bones, and it sank deep into his cheeks and around his eyes, making him look skeletal. If it weren’t for the faint, shuddering rise and fall of his chest, Draco would have thought that he was already dead.  
Narcissa hovered over him, fluffing expensive antique pillows, gently moving his head into a more comfortable position. Every time he moved, the stench of death billowed into the air, making Draco feel sick. His stomach was churning. He wanted to rip the window open and vomit into the clean, living air outside.  
But he wouldn’t have moved anyway, because he was frozen, transfixed, staring at the empty body of his father. Only a month ago, he had returned from Azkaban. And since then, he had quietly wasted away in his Manor, among his jewels and his gold. Every day Draco had woken up to see him just a bit sicker than he had been yesterday, just a bit closer to death.   
But in his eyes, there had always been the faintest fire. His magic, still burning inside of him, perhaps burning him alive. It had glowed an icy blue, and it had made Draco shiver. Now, more than ever. For the madness there was a living, breathing thing. It twisted and contorted grotesquely, it shivered as if it was cold. It rocked back and forth on its heels in the shadowed corner of Lucius’s bedroom, with its hand braced against the wall as if the floor was going to fall away. It lifted its wand and destroyed anything in its path, and tortured anyone who dared to stand in its way.  
Draco shuddered.  
Narcissa noticed. She turned, moving her gray, unwashed hair out of her eyes, and crept closer to him. Quietly, they all moved quietly, unwilling to wake him. To face the madness in his eyes. And Narcissa whispered, almost silently, so as not to disturb him while he died.  
“Do not worry, Draco,” she whispered, and she lifted a shaking hand to move the hair out of his eyes. “We live on, remember? Your father may die, but his magic, and his soul will go on eternally. The essence, the very spirit of Lucius Malfoy will breathe forever.” And she smiled, somehow, pretending to be happy. Pretending that she believed it, and that that was okay.  
Draco did not smile in return. He stood with his back straight, staring blankly at her and her smile. For, somewhere deep in Narcissa’s dark eyes, the madness was waiting. Writhing, twisting, turning like fire. Licking at her brain, and digging its razor-sharp nails into the sides of her skull.  
Narcissa smiled again, attempting to be reassuring, then she walked out of the room that smelled like death, leaving the door open behind her. Draco waited until the faint sounds of her footsteps had died away.   
Then he crossed the room and flung the window open. Cool air washed over him, but it did not ease the sickness that had settled in his gut. Draco knew that it was there to stay. So he turned back to his father’s bedside, putting his hands on the expensive silken sheets and leaning over him, just to look.  
Just to see the pale, thin lips, half-open, drawing in faint, rasping, ragged breaths, To see the eyelashes flutter from above translucent eyelids, riddled with veins. The stern, proud face of a Malfoy, now thin, now sharp, now like a skull. And it reminded Draco of the dark lord, and so he looked away, letting his eyes trail down his father’s body. To the hands with the white, dead skin stretched over knuckles and bones and joints that stuck out oddly. To the black suit that he was wearing, too uncomfortable to lie in, so he must be sleeping in the clothes that he was to be buried in. After all, it wouldn’t be long. Why not hurry things up a bit?  
Draco swallowed down the bile that was rising sourly into his throat. His stomach flipped, making him groan with the sickness, with the smell of death, with the hidden madness, all eating him alive, too.   
And then Lucius’s eyes flipped open.  
He stared at the ceiling for a few moment, staring wildly out of icy, blank eyes. And then they snapped to Draco’s face, fixing him with a crazed glare like a dagger, it was so sharp. Draco moved his hands away from the bed, bringing them to his sides. But he did not move away. He only sucked in a sharp breath as his near-dead father watched him, with the madness writhing within his eyes.  
And the magic, burning like a wildfire. It was so colorful, and so beautiful, that in that moment Draco could almost believe that when his father’s body wasted away, some part of him would live on.   
And something snapped.  
The poised, confident Malfoy mask fell away, revealing a sobbing eighteen-year-old boy, kneeling at the deathbed of his father. Draco’s heart was wrenched out of his chest through ragged, convulsing gasps. His throat burned with bile, and his body shuddered as it poured out painful, bloody tears.  
And then he felt a hand on his shoulder.  
It was not warm. It was cold. As if it were already dead. And Draco looked up, slowly, with his heart pounding wildly in his chest, to see the bony hand of Lucius Malfoy, gripping his shoulder so tightly that his nails dug into Draco’s flesh. Draco looked up to see Lucius’s eyes on his, wide and made and blue.  
“Father,” Draco gasped, standing against to lean over his father’s body. “Don’t leave me!” he cried, his voice hoarse from crying, from ripping the flesh out of his throat. Lucius moved his hand to grip Draco’s, feebly, but with his stick-like hands wrapped eerily around Draco’s wrist.  
Lucius opened his pale, cracked lips. At first, all that came out was a wheeze, and his head was lifted off of the pillow, twisted with pain. And then it hit the pillow again.   
And this time, when Lucius opened his mouth, barely audible, broken words came out. Draco leaned closer to hear, with his long strands of hair nearly brushing Lucius’s skeletal face. “You?” Lucius said. “Oh, you won’t have to worry about that,” his voice dropped to a whisper, and the faint ghost of a smile flickered over his lips. The madness burned in his eyes, dancing, yellow and bright as the sun.  
And then he lunged forward, like a corpse coming to life, with his mouth agape in a horrible scream that sounded like it was ripping the lungs from his body. And Draco recoiled in disgust, but it was too late, for Lucius’s pale, dead hands wrapped around his son’s throat, choking the life out of him. Draco’s hands jerked to his throat, trying to pry away his father’s fingers, but they were suddenly strong as stone, and he couldn’t move them. And then the panic hit him like a blow to the head, making everything spin and go dark, making stars dance in from of his eyes. And then Draco’s world became blurred, and his hands fell to his sides.  
Wild, crazy magic slowly sucked the life out of Draco’s body, making him fall to his knees, with Lucius’s hands still wrapped around his neck, and with his claw-like nails scraping the skin from his throat. Draco’s body went slack, his heart stopped beating, his lungs stopped working. And Lucius let go of him, letting him fall to the floor in a heap.  
The madness burned like a fire, and Lucius finally lost himself to it. His body fell like a stone to the floor, but the madness rose up in a spiral of smoke and disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me if it was good! I wrote this for a writing contest, and I'd really love to win... or, at the very least, not submit something that is terrible. If you see any glaring mistakes, don't hesitate to tell me! I will welcome any and all criticism.


End file.
